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Mediterranean Lagrangian drifters data from 1998 to 2022

The CNR realised over 138 experiments in the Mediterranean basin with surface Lagrangian drifters in 12 years, not continuously, between July 1998 and April 2022 (month of the last recovery), at coastal and offshore level. Lagrangian drifters produced and sold by 4 different enterprises have been used in the years, with different characteristics in data transmission, structure, repeatability of the experiments, dimensions, batteries, management of the experiments. The four drifters were used in different periods (see the table): - in 1998-1999 the Coastal Lagrangian Drifter (CLD), by Italian company InnoTech S.c.r.l., designed just for coastal use with GPS transmission of its position, by a Trimble Lassen™ SK8, at a frequency of 5 minutes by a GSM mobile phone. The CLD had a housing in PVC with electronic unit, rechargeable battery pack and antennas at its top. Its dimensions were 140 cm high x 27 cm in diameter with a weight of 12.5 Kg. A drogue was used below the CLD; - in 2009-2010 the ArgoDrifter or CODE drifter by Technocean (FL, USA) consisting in a white cylinder of 110 cm height x 15 cm in diameter with four blue sails placed at 90°, for a total area of about 25 m2. Its not rechargeable batteries permitted transmissions till a year by an ARGOS satellite transmitter, a GPS for its localisation and a temperature sensor. Its position at sea was given by both satellite triangulation and GPS; - in 2014 the Iridium Ocean Drifters (ODi) by the Spanish Albatros Marine Technology SA were small, low-cost, and compact surface buoys localised by a GPS module based on Iridium satellite data transmission system (Short Burst Data - SBD). Its housing were two identical halves of a spherical drifter, sealed with an O-ring of 20 cm in diameter and 3 Kg of weight. Drogues were used below drifters; - in 2015-2022 coastal and offshore Nomad drifters by the Spanish SouthTEK Sensing Technologies S.L. were coastal GPRS, namely the Coastal Nomad, and offshore satellite, namely the Offshore Nomad. Both types were made in plastic, yellow colour, 72 cm in height x 22 cm in diameter and 2.895 Kg of weight. The lithium rechargeable batteries allowed operations up to 7 days to the GPRS and several months to the satellite drifters. In the water, only 16 cm of the cylindrical head were over the sea surface. The Nomad drifters were of different types: LCA (GPRS), LCE (satellite), LCH (hybrid, GPRS and satellite), LCF (satellite with temperature sensor). See the list of experiments per year in the Table Immediately any acquisition drifter data were pre-processed and repeated positions or wrong date/time, usually a failure of GPS receiver and visible on plotted tracks, were manually deleted. This was followed by an editing procedure implemented at OGS (Gerin and Bussani, 2011; Menna et al., 2017) starting with the retrieve of the deployment information then filled into the OGS PostgreSQL database, enriched with other important metadata as the type and characteristics of the instruments, the owner, the principal investigator. Here location errors were also replaced with NaNs based on the evaluation of different potential origins of error like positions outside the Mediterranean or on land, duplicated data or data acquired outside the date/time of the experiment or wrong velocities. Further erroneous data remained were then manually removed through a visual check. In some cases, the drifter trajectory was considered as two different deployments and split into more segments due to important temporal gaps or acquisition frequency modifications during the experiment. A new recovery/deployment information were included in the database and the automatic editing procedure is relaunched. A following step was the interpolation of edited data at uniform intervals using a kriging optimal interpolation method (Hansen and Poulain, 1996): at 1-hour intervals data with a frequency in acquisition between a few minutes and 2 hours; at 3-h intervals with frequency till 6 hours; at 6-h intervals with frequency higher than 6 hours. The velocities were calculated as finite differences of the interpolated position. At the end, from the 366 drifter tracks the shortest (just a few data long) were deleted, not permitting a good interpolation, then a final dataset of 204 interpolated drifter tracks is finally available. The presented dataset is composed of the interpolated data in NetCDF files which include the time, latitude, longitude, zonal and meridional speed, and metadata. To be coherent with other dataset released by OGS other 3 variables (Drogue, SST and Volt) are included in the files although they are all set to NaNs as the related information is not available for this dataset. Image Reference: https://www.seanoe.org/data/00793/90537/illustrations/illustration-157.gif. Bibliography Gerin, R. and Bussani, A.: Nuova procedura di editing automatico dei dati drifter impiegata su oceano per MyOcean e prodotti web in near-real time e delay mode, REL. OGS 2011/55 OGA 20 SIRE, Trieste, Italy, 13 pp., 2011 Hansen, D.V. and Poulain, P.-M.: Quality control and interpolations of WOCE-TOGA drifter data, J. Atmos. Ocean. Technol., 13, 900–909, http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1175/1520-0426 (1996)013<0900:QCAIOW> 2.0.CO;2,  1996. Menna, M., Gerin, R., Bussani, A., Poulain, P.-M.: The OGS Mediterranean Drifter Dataset: 1986-2016, Rel. OGS 2017/92 OCE 28 MAOS, Trieste, Italy, 34 pp., 2017.

Important Note: This submission has been initially submitted to SEA

scieNtific Open data Edition (SEANOE) publication service and received the recorded DOI.

The metadata elements have been further processed (refined) in EMODnet

Ingestion Service in order to conform with the Data Submission Service

specifications.

Simple

Date (Creation)
2022-09-19
Date (Revision)
2023-01-10
Date (Publication)
2023-03-03
Date (Publication)
2023-05-09
Citation identifier
a53ad03f-3930-9303-3035-000000090537
Code
DOI:10.17882/90537
Other citation details

Ribotti Alberto, Bussani Antonio, Menna Milena, Satta Andrea, Sorgente Roberto, Cucco Andrea, Gerin Riccardo (2022). Mediterranean Lagrangian drifters data from 1998 to 2022. SEANOE. https://doi.org/10.17882/90537

Point of contact
Organisation name Individual name Electronic mail address Role
SEA scieNtific Open data Edition

data@seanoe.org

Publisher
Ifremer, Scientific Information Systems for the sea

sismer@ifremer.fr

Dataset Holding Organisation
National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics - OGS, Division of Oceanography

nodc@ogs.it

Author
GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0
  • Oceanographic geographical features
SeaVoX salt and fresh water body gazetteer
  • Mediterranean Region
  • Mediterranean Sea
SeaDataNet Agreed Parameter Groups
  • inapplicable
SeaDataNet Parameter Discovery Vocabulary
  • Horizontal velocity of the water column (currents)
SeaVoX Platform Categories
  • drifting surface float
MEDIN data format categories
  • Network Common Data Form
Keywords
    Access constraints
    Other restrictions
    Other constraints
    no limitations to public access
    Use limitation

    Conditions for access and use apply

    Use constraints
    Other restrictions
    Other constraints

    CC-BY 4.0

    Character set
    UTF8
    Topic category
    • Oceans
    Begin date
    1998-05-01
    End date
    2021-11-30
    N
    S
    E
    W
    thumbnail




    Unique resource identifier
    WGS 1984

    Spatial representation info

    No information provided.
    Distribution format
    Name Version
    Network Common Data Form

    1

    OnLine resource
    Protocol Linkage Name

    WWW:DOWNLOAD-1.0-http--download

    https://cloud.emodnet-ingestion.eu/index.php/s/pS9yBTUJfjJfRRo

    WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link

    https://cdi.seadatanet.org/search/welcome.php?query=2610&query_code=%7B9F00DF80-1881-42DD-9DF1-B9BD0282F2B0%7D
    Hierarchy level
    Dataset

    Conformance result

    Title

    COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 1205/2008 of 3 December 2008 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards metadata

    Date (Publication)
    2010-12-08
    Explanation

    See the referenced specification

    Pass
    No

    Conformance result

    Title

    Corrigendum to INSPIRE Metadata Regulation published in the Official Journal of the European Union, L 328, page 83

    Date (Publication)
    2010-12-08
    Explanation

    See the referenced specification

    Pass
    No

    Conformance result

    Title

    Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services

    Date (Publication)
    2010-12-08
    Explanation

    See the referenced specification

    Pass
    No
    Statement

    Processed data

    Metadata

    File identifier
    a53ad03f-3930-9303-3035-000000090537 XML
    Metadata language
    English
    Character set
    UTF8
    Hierarchy level
    Dataset
    Date stamp
    2025-05-09T00:00:00
    Metadata standard name

    ISO 19115:2003/19139

    Metadata standard version

    1.0

    Metadata author
    Organisation name Individual name Electronic mail address Role
    CNR, Institute for the study of anthropic impacts and sustainability in the marine environment, Oristano

    segreteria.or@ias.cnr.it

    Point of contact
     
     

    Overviews

    Spatial extent

    thumbnail

    Keywords

    GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

    Oceanographic geographical features
    MEDIN data format categories

    Network Common Data Form
    SeaDataNet Agreed Parameter Groups

    inapplicable
    SeaDataNet Parameter Discovery Vocabulary

    Horizontal velocity of the water column (currents)
    SeaVoX Platform Categories

    drifting surface float


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